tagged w/ Starvation
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Fukushima's animals abandoned and left to die
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By Kyung Lah, CNN
updated 5:48 AM EST, Thu January 26, 2012
Click link to play video
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Animals left to die in Fukushima zone
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Nearly a year after the quake and tsunami, animal carcasses litter the region
Animal activists call the dead animals an outrage
Environmental agency says government has tried to rescue as many as possible
It points out the risk posed to people entering the contaminated area
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Inside Fukushima Exclusion Zone, Japan (CNN) --
When you stand in the center of Japan's exclusion zone, there is absolute silence. The exclusion zone is the 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an area of high radiation contamination.
On March 12, the day after the quake and tsunami hit, 78,000 people were evacuated out of this area, believing they would return within a few days. As such, thousands of people left with their dogs tied up in the backyard, cats in their houses and livestock penned in barns.
Nearly a year later, animal carcasses litter the region.
Cows and pigs starved to death, their bones still in pens. Dogs dropped dead with disease. A cat skull sits on a neighborhood road.
This is perhaps an inevitable outcome to a nuclear emergency, but animal rights activists call it an outrage.
"It's shameful," says Yasunori Hoso with United Kennel Club Japan. "We kept asking the government to rescue these animals from the beginning of the disaster. There must have been a way to rescue the people and the animals at the same time following the nuclear disaster at Fukushima."
Japan's environmental agency tells CNN the government's position has been to rescue as many livestock and animals possible. But it points out that because of the risk posed to people entering the contaminated area, the government has chosen to take a prudent attitude toward animal rescue.
Last December, the government allowed animal rights groups like UKC Japan to enter the exclusion zone and rescue any surviving animals. Hoso entered with his members, carrying cages and food.
On one of those days, Hoso's group approached a house. A six-week-old female puppy lay dead in the living room in a pool of blood. It appeared to have died from disease. From the back of the house, the UKC volunteers heard weak barking. The puppy's two brothers were still alive, hiding in another part of the house. They were traumatized and afraid of the rescuers, having never been around people before. The volunteers soon rounded up their mother.
Those dogs now reside at the UKC Japan shelter near Tokyo. 250 dogs and 100 cats, all from the exclusion zone, live in cramped cages at the shelter. UKC Japan, which survives on donations, says it has tracked down 80% of the owners.
But that hasn't meant the animals can reunite with owners. Shelters and temporary apartment housing have not allowed the owners to live with their pets, Hoso said.
Unfortunately, he added, the owners can't live with their animals because they are homeless themselves.
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Fukushima's animals abandoned and left to die
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By Kyung... more
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CNN...
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Belugas trapped in icy Arctic waters at risk of death
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 2:45 PM EST, Wed December 14, 2011
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
More than 100 Belugas are trapped in ice flows off the Bering Sea
Unless the whales are rescued soon, they could die from suffocation or starvation
Local authorities have sought help from Moscow
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Moscow (CNN) -- Prisoners in ice, more than 100 Beluga whales in far eastern Russia risk death unless rescued soon.
The flock of gentle ghost-white whales was trapped in ice floes in the Sinyavinsky Strait off the Bering Sea near the village of Yanrakynnot, said a statement from the Chukotka Autonomous Region.
Fishermen reported that the whales were concentrated in two relatively small ice holes, where, for now, they can breathe freely. But the Belugas' chance of swimming back to water is slim due to the vast fields of ice over the strait.
The whales have little food, and the ice flow is increasing, the statement said. They are at risk of rapid exhaustion and, ultimately, death by starvation or suffocation. Trapped whales are also susceptible to predators like polar bears and killer whales.
The Chukotka Autonomous Region government has sought help from federal authorities and asked for an icebreaker to help rescue the Belugas. A rescue tug, Ruby, was in the area helping a Korean cargo ship that ran aground on the southern coast of Chukotka but it would take one and a half days for it to reach the whales, the statement said.
Trapped belugas are a frequent phenomenon in the Arctic waters but are not often detected by people. In Chukotka, the last relatively successful case was recorded in 1986, when an ice-breaker helped free trapped beluga whales.
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Belugas trapped in icy Arctic waters at risk of death
By the CNN... more
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Los Angeles Times...
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Southern California -- this just in
Nearly 60 animals seized at 'death trap' in rural San Diego County
December 2, 2011 | 4:51 pm
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Fifty-eight animals in the rural community of Campo were seized Friday by San Diego County sheriff's deputies and animal services officers in a raid on a small ranch that one animal services officer called a "death trap."
The animals included goats, sheep, llamas, cattle and horses. Many of the animals were sick, were on the verge of starvation and had overgrown hooves, investigators said.
On Nov. 9, animal control officers had found nine dead goats and a dead llama on the same property. Necropsies determined that the animals had probably died of starvation.
The owners were given a warning about the remaining animals but apparently were not following through on their promises to provide better feed and care, according to Lt. Dan DeSousa of the county Department of Animal Services.
"We were not going to allow these animals to remain and suffer the same fate as the others," DeSousa said.
The animals were taken to a county-run facility in Bonita. Investigators are gathering evidence and will present a report to the district attorney about possible animal cruelty charges against the property owners, DeSousa said.
Deputies and investigators allowed several dogs, several chickens and a pig to remain. "But we'll be monitoring to see how they are doing," DeSousa said.
Campo is an hour east of downtown San Diego. The owners were not home at the time of the raid.
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Southern California -- this just in
Nearly 60... more
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http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video)
—The medical chart Abdisalam Osman’s mother uses to flick away flies says her youngest son suffers from acute malnutrition and the measles. A chest X-ray will soon reveal he also has tuberculosis.
When he arrived at Mogadishu's Benadir Hospital, 3-year-old Abdisalam weighed only 14 pounds. Each laborious breath made his tiny rib cage stick out even farther.
He lies beside his mother, unable to cry; all his energy reserved for his weak gasps.
“A 50-50 chance,” says Dr. Shafie Mohamed Jimale, gently touching the little boy’s emaciated arm. The 30-year-old Somali pediatrician, trained in Sudan, became a father two months earlier; his son was born at the height of the famine that is mainly killing children.
Many of his patients have died. About 50-50.
When Somalia’s famine was declared in July there were emergency calls for help and shocking statistics: 29,000 children had died in the worst drought in 60 years.
A global relief effort has helped save some. Last Friday, the United Nations Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit downgraded famine declarations for three southern regions, thanks to the rains that have finally come and emergency food aid.
But the UN warns that 250,000 are at risk as cholera, malaria and other diseases spread through crowded hospitals and camps. Tens of thousands of others still face starvation.
This famine should not have come as a shock. And if its roots are not understood and the world looks away again, Somalia’s cycle of despair — corruption, starvation, war, death — will continue, dragging children like Abdisalam into its abyss.
So what caused the famine?
Back-to-back droughts killed the livestock and destroyed the farms throughout the Horn of Africa, like the one Abdisalam’s family tended.
The southern region of the country is also warring with Al Shabab, the militant Islamic group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, and starved its own people by blocking outside foreign aid.
These are the easy answers.
These are the hard ones: Somalia’s rampant and criminal government-corruption; a war on terror at the expense of aid; and a lucrative crisis industry that spends millions that Somalis will never see.
This is why this country has topped Foreign Policy’s index of failed states for the last three years and why a drought that affected the entire Horn of Africa became a famine only in Somalia.
The scope of the tragedy is overwhelming. Last Friday’s UN announcement on easing famine conditions did not include Mogadishu. The city remains a famine zone.
Tents made of sticks and cloth, pitched between dilapidated buildings, house the starving and desperate. The sea of people in the camps ripples endlessly. It is difficult to get an accurate estimate, but it is believed that more than 100,000 have arrived since July.
Water is still scarce and largely contaminated. Mounds of human feces dot walkways between the shelters. Security is a problem. Rapes and abuses have been reported. Few foreign aid groups have come, with the exception of the Turks, who have taken over a large region of the city now called “Little Istanbul.”
Across the street from Tarabunka, a sprawling camp of more than 16,000, the graveyard is already near capacity. Ali Kafi, one of the farmers-turned-gravediggers, says he hunts untouched patches of red earth to find burial plots. Before 10 on one October morning, three babies and a young woman, nine-months pregnant, were buried. It was a typical day.
The good news for Mogadishu is that there are few visible remnants of the Shabab, which has waged war against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for nearly three years.
Weakened themselves by the famine and claiming to withdraw for “tactical” purposes, hundreds of Shabab fighters abruptly left the capital this summer.
This is why Abdisalam’s family trekked here from the south, believing there would be help in Mogadishu from the TFG, the UN-backed parliament of 550, propped up by a 9,000-member African Union peacekeeping force of Burundian and Ugandan soldiers.
The TFG had an opportunity to repair its badly damaged reputation and make the famine a priority. That didn’t happen.
As people began to starve earlier this year, the country’s president and its parliamentary speaker — President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Speaker Hassan Sharif, who are known as the “Two Sharifs” — were locked in a dispute, trying to shore up political support as they debated at conferences in Djibouti, Kenya or Uganda.
“They say the fish starts rotting from the head,” says Abdi Rashid, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “At the height of the famine, there was a president who was busy holding meetings with clan elders, not talking about the famine, but about the struggle with the speaker of parliament.”
But the “Two Sharifs” are not the only members of the TFG accused of political gamesmanship or corruption.
One senior TFG official says he is disgusted with his government’s continued focus on politics and power.
“What are we doing?” he asks. “People are dying and we’re focusing on passing a road map?”
snip
Still, there is confusion, says Joe Belliveau, operations manager in Somalia for Médecins Sans Frontières. “The bottom line is that it certainly does not encourage humanitarian action,” Belliveau says. “It’s fine to say that these conditions are lifted and maybe that will help in the short term, but the fact that those laws are on the books remains a major deterrent.”
Abdisalam is defying the odds that have conspired against him — the war against the Shabab, corruption, ineffective aid groups and a famine that the world failed to stop but is now trying to ease.
The nutrition supplements provided by the hospital have made him stronger and TB medication has calmed his breathing.
“He’s a fighter,” said Jimale, the doctor who has volunteered at the city-run Benadir Hospital for the last two years.
Abdisalam was discharged from the hospital three weeks ago and Jimale said the little boy’s odds of survival had increased to more than 80 per cent.
But Abdisalam and his family haven’t returned home. The rains may have come and eased the drought, but a Kenyan-led offensive to fight the Shabab has left the region war torn again.
Abdisalam now lives in one of the camps, just one of thousands getting by, waiting for help.http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video)
—The medical chart Abdisalam... more
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{{{I wanted to blog something REALLY scary and frightening this year for Halloween. I thought of the usual icons of Halloween: Frankenstein, Ghosts, or perhaps Freddie Cruger of ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ fame but when I saw the article 'Various '7 billionth' babies celebrated worldwide' I thought... 'THERE AIN'T NUTTIN SCARIER THAN THAT"!
Please read the article, it's a real eye-opener and should awake every one of us to the realization that something has to be done about this fiasco and FAST! The pain and anguish that awaits our kind will be of epic proportions, in the not so distant future. }}}
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It's Halloween and a little baby girl is born (a symbol of the Earth's human population reaching 7B). WOW, THAT'S SCARY; 7 billion homo-sapiens running around, drinking and devouring Earth's limited resources. Should say volumes to the anti-choice people who are now trying to pass ignorant and delusional laws that say personhood begins at conception (fertilization of the egg).
I wonder, will this law make them all start to label their belief systems’, God, a murderer for spontaneous abortion (miscarriage)?
The mother of this 7 billionth Earthling says it best...
"The number of homeless children I see on the streets keeps multiplying," Camacho said. "When I see them, I'm bothered because I eat and maybe they don't."
I wish the so called 'Pro Lifers" could conjure up such compassion and empathy for all those future babies who will be born into a world that cannot feed and nourish their humongous number' thus, condemning them a life of misery and suffering. Please read this informative but startling article.
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Various '7 billionth' babies celebrated worldwide
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — She came into the world at two minutes before midnight, a tiny, wrinkled girl born into a struggling Manila family. On Monday, she became a symbol of the world's population reaching 7 billion people and all the worries that entails for the planet's future.
Danica May Camacho, born in a crowded public hospital, was welcomed with a chocolate cake marked "7B Philippines" and a gift certificate for free shoes. There were bursts of photographers' flashes, and speeches by local officials.
The celebrations, though, reflected symbolism more than demography.
Amid the millions of births and deaths around the world each day, it is impossible to pinpoint the arrival of the globe's 7 billionth occupant. But the U.N. chose Monday to mark the day with a string of festivities worldwide, and a series of symbolic 7-billionth babies being born.
Danica was the first, arriving at Manila's Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital at two minutes before midnight Sunday — but doctors say that was close enough to count for a Monday birthday.
"She looks so lovely," the mother, Camille Galura, whispered as she cradled the 2.5-kilo (5.5-pound) baby, who was born about a month premature.
The baby was the second for Galura and her partner, Florante Camacho, a driver who supports the family on a tiny salary driving a 'jeepney,' ubiquitous four-wheel drive vehicles used by many poor and working-class Filipinos.
Dr. Eric Tayag of the Philippines' Department of Health said later that the birth came with a warning.
"Seven billion is a number we should think about deeply," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/various-7-billionth-babies-celebrated-worldwide-064439018.html{{{I wanted to blog something REALLY scary and frightening this year for Halloween. I... more
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http://rtruth.blog.com/2011/09/12/collateral-damage-uncovering-haarp/
HAARP with its 180 transmission towers, that combine to emit a massive beam, of power and light, In a burst lasting more than a few minutes, it slices through the Ionosphere like a scalpel made of microwaves. This produces a long incision in this vital layer of the atmosphere. HAARP then heats large sections of the Ionosphere until they bulge to form a ‘curved lens’. This ‘curved lens’ reflects HAARP’s massive energy beams, back to earth to destroy selected targets. Presumably without leaving even a trace of what caused the devastation. Except for the strange circular cloud formations that occur once the ‘curved lens’ is created. Think about the movie Independence Day when the White House was obliterated by the alien Spaceship hovering above. Well HAARP works like that beam from the spaceship. However you don’t need to hover over your target or even be seen. HAARP directs the beam from space and you can’t even prove it was HAARP. Wow! Thats scary at the same time.http://rtruth.blog.com/2011/09/12/collateral-damage-uncovering-haarp/
HAARP with... more
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mab001
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Amid the graves of Somalia's children
CNN...
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Burying a child: A mother's unending grief
Sanjay Gupta MD
By Sanjay Gupta, M.D., Chief Medical Correspondent
August 11, 2011 11:25 a.m. EDT
Fight to save Somali kids
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Gupta's visit with Somalian refugees brings disturbing memories
He recalls the grieving mother of a boyhood friend who died
Thousands of Somalian parents have buried their children this summer
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Editor's note: Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes you deep inside the misery of the largest refugee camp in the world, "SGMD," Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET
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Dadaab, Kenya (CNN) --
When I was in the third grade, a classmate of mine died of leukemia. None of us knew he was sick, only that his mother hadn't let him attend school in a while.
More than 30 years later, I still remember the awful day my mom told me my friend had passed away. I made a card for his mother, and walked to their house to deliver it. She was too overcome to take any visitors, but thanked me and took the card. I can recall her broken up face when she shut the door.
Over time we lost touch, but during the holidays a couple of years ago, I stopped by her home to pay a visit. She recognized me right away, smiled and invited me in for a cup of coffee. And then, while hanging my jacket, she began to tremble and cry.
So many years later, the sorrow was just under the surface. The experience left an indelible impression on me, one that I better understood after becoming a parent myself. It violates a natural order of life to bury your own child, and I am not sure the grief ever goes away.
That's the position 30,000 Somali parents found themselves in this summer. And, 600,000 more children may be buried before the end of the year. In just about any other place on Earth, those numbers would scream out from international headlines, but not here in East Africa.
Inside the Dadaab Refugee Camp, a mass burial site sits within walking distance of the close cluster of tents. Amin Hassan took me to see the tiny burial site of her 1-month old daughter, Addison.
It was nearly lost among all the other shallow, hastily dug graves. Small sticks mark these raised plots of dirt with nothing else except bits of colored plastic trash stuck in the ground and blowing in the wind.
There are no nameplates, no flowers and no reminders of their lives. People here just vanish.
"She was perfectly healthy when she arrived," Amin told me.
They had left Somalia in search of food and water, and felt relief when they finally reached the camp. It may have been contaminated water that caused little Addison's intractable diarrhea and vomiting or an overwhelming infection.
Pertussis or whooping cough is something they see quite often here. "And measles," one of the doctors told me.
Many of these infections are wildly contagious, especially among the hundreds of thousands of un-vaccinated kids in these camps.
As I stood and spoke to Hassan, with all those tiny burial sites around us, I couldn't help but think of my friend and his mother. I thought of that unnatural order of parents burying their children.
I thought about Hassan's lifelong grief.
Amin Hassan dug the grave for her daughter by herself.
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.Amid the graves of Somalia's children
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Burying a child: A... more
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One of the saddest clips out of the Horn of Africa. These foreign journalists entered Somalia and broke down in tears. The region already gripped by decades of war is suffering a major famine.One of the saddest clips out of the Horn of Africa. These foreign journalists entered... more
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Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: August 1, 2011
PHOTO: A malnourished child at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. More than 500,000 Somali children are verging on starvation.
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Amid Famine, Dangers Hinder Aid to Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
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The group is widely blamed for causing a famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations, depriving drought victims of desperately needed food. The situation is growing bleaker by the day, with tens of thousands of Somalis already dead and more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation.
Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.
Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.
“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”
Aid groups are trying to scale up their operations, and the United Nations has begun airlifting emergency food. But many seasoned aid officials are speaking in grim tones because one of Africa’s worst humanitarian disasters in decades has struck one of the most inaccessible countries on earth. Somalia, especially the southern third where the famine is, has been considered a no-go zone for years, a lawless caldron that has claimed the lives of dozens of aid workers, peacekeepers and American soldiers, going back to the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993, spelling a legacy that has scared off many international organizations.
“If this were Haiti, we would have dozens of people on the ground by now,” said Eric James, an official with the American Refugee Committee, a private aid organization.
But Somalia is considered more dangerous and anarchic than Haiti, Iraq or even Afghanistan, and the American Refugee Committee, like other aid groups, is struggling to get trained personnel here.
“It is safe to say that many people are going to die as a result of little or no access,” Mr. James said.
This leaves millions of famished Somalis with two choices, aside from fleeing the country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia, where there is more assistance. They can beg for help from a weak and divided transitional government in Mogadishu, the capital. Just the other day there was a shootout between government forces at the gates of the presidential palace. “Things happen,” was the response of Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, Somalia’s new prime minister.
Or they can remain in territory controlled by the Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have tried to rid their areas of anything Western — Western music, Western dress, even Western aid groups during a time of famine.
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http://current.com/shows/upstream/93350473_famine-in-somalia.htm
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Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine
By JEFFREY... more
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Even the dramatic recent reductions in the cost of spectacles and cataract operations are not doing enough to reduce the catastrophic impact that untreated sight conditions have in the third world, but strangely enough, our appetite for HD on our mobile phones will fix this.Even the dramatic recent reductions in the cost of spectacles and cataract operations... more
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The name Plumpy’nut may sound quirky, but this ridiculously simple product idea is already keeping countless famine-struck children from starvation and will save millions of lives
The French are not known for granting unequivocal recognition to the culinary majesty that is ‘peanut butter and jelly’, especially when Americans go as far as using it as a metaphor for obviousness, in terms of “things that naturally go together”. But these small packs of sweet, fortified peanut butter are a French invention which is revolutionising humanitarian relief.The name Plumpy’nut may sound quirky, but this ridiculously simple product idea... more
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare a famine, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
Famine, a highly technical term, means that the rate of child malnutrition and deaths in two areas of southern Somalia, a country riven by fighting and drought, has risen. Agencies appeal for aid.
PHOTO: Eleven-month-old Abdifatah Hassan, suffering from severe malnutrition, is cared for at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders at a camp housing Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya. The United Nations officially declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia, saying child malnutrition rates exceed 30% and as many as six children age 5 or younger are dying daily. The region is suffering its worst drought in 60 years and tens of thousands are feared dead.
(Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Images / July 4, 2011)
By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2011, 2:19 p.m.
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa—
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For months, people have been trudging out of the desert, leaving their dead children behind and carrying those who have managed to survive. On Wednesday, the horror of hunger and death unfolding in the Horn of Africa officially got a name: famine.
It's actually a very technical term — unless you're one of those walking for weeks in a last-ditch hope to save your family.
For the United Nations to declare a famine, as it did at a news conference in Nairobi, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
According to Unicef, the U.N. agency that focuses on children, the rate of child malnutrition rate in southern Somalia has doubled in a single month; in some places it has reached 55% and infant deaths have increased to six per day.
Yet the global response has been dismal. An appeal late last year for $535 million to address the need is still more than $250 million short. Officials hope the famine declaration will help focus global attention on the Horn of Africa.
Across the country, about 3.7 million people, half the population, are facing starvation, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south. The agency says another 6.3 million in other countries in the Horn of Africa affected by hunger.
It's the worst African hunger crisis in 20 years, according the Rozanne Chorlton, Unicef's representative on Somalia. The last time things were this dire in Africa was 1991. Then, as now, it was in Somalia.
The U.N. famine declaration Wednesday formally covered two regions of southern Somalia, Bakool and Lower Shabelle, where farmers' crops failed and their livestock died. Malnutrition rates exceed 30% and more than six children age 5 or younger are dying daily in some areas. But in coming months, neighboring regions will inevitably fall into famine too, said Mark Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
U.N. and non-governmental agencies are appealing for $300 million in the next two months to increase their operations in the worst-hit areas.
If it seems extraordinary that millions of Africans can be facing starvation in 2011, despite the focus of a raft of humanitarian agencies and their early-warning networks, it is, Bowden said.
Part of the problem is that many donors had written off Somalia as too hard, he said in a telephone interview. Aid agencies must grapple with a long-running civil conflict and Somalia's extremist Shabab militia, which controls much of the south, where the worst hunger is.
"We have good warning systems, but we don't always listen to them, particularly if we put some countries in the too-difficult-to-deal-with basket," Bowden said.
Two decades with no government and the failure of successive efforts to restore peace have left donors cynical. The country's global reputation for piracy and mayhem have done it no favors.
The 1991 Somalia famine occurred after civil war destroyed agriculture and clan warlords hijacked humanitarian aid, leading to the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope. That resulted in bloody fighting with militias in Mogadishu portrayed in the book and film "Black Hawk Down."
But Bowden, who recently met Somali refugees walking to Ethiopia, said the problem today was mainly one of successive drought, compounded by global warming.
"They are victims of drought. They are also victims of climate change. They're people who have lost everything after years of successive drought."
The situation is complicated by the Shabab, which in the past has imposed informal taxes on humanitarian agencies, limited their access, and demanded they send female staff home. The World Food Program withdrew early last year from areas controlled by the Shabab because of security threats and unacceptable working conditions. It recently announced it would resume it work there if conditions allowed.
Aid agencies have been negotiating access with local leaders, but security remains uncertain.
"We need predictability," Unicef's Chorlton said in a telephone interview. "The important thing is that those who are there [in Somalia] should be able to act unhindered to deliver the services to children and families that are so desperately needed."
Unicef has doubled its food, health and water programs in Somalia, she said.
"Somalis have always helped each other to cope in times of crisis, and they have been incredibly resilient over the years. I think what has not been quantified is that people's resistance has been so undermined over the last year, it's no longer adequate to the task," she said. "The issue is now we need donors to massively increase their contribution."
.U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare... more
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Starvation! Working or not-inflation-recession... calls for a sacred moment with Jesus Christ. Exclusive gospel channel: http://tinyurl.com/exclusive-gospel-channelStarvation! Working or not-inflation-recession... calls for a sacred moment with Jesus... more
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The current, daily more bizarre international situation, however, how absurd it may sound, is comparable to the days and the weeks, the years before French Revolution. A desperate financial crisis, which was self-made, knitted, an always deferred reform, some sort a blockade, not only on the life worthy issue of incumbent climate changes of the world, this progress could have served all people. And all, what is already bitter enough, history has repeated, this time, in our days.
However, the smug, greedy bankers, shady business leaders, strange political, some of the Constitution completely indifferent currents, an all-dominant intelligence, an uncontrollable power gadget, which acts apparently out of a never-ending, infinite resource against a hostile, every day potentiating crisis. Once it is the digital spirit of Osama bin-Laden, his invisible terrorist assessed successor, El-Kaida. Then suddenly, because they can get hold of one, new, sudden enemy.
The US-Adminstration, who distracts from other problems that affect us all, found the foe: Julian Paul Assange and his organization Wikileaks. Now Julian Paul Assange, who is declared a public enemy number 1,only because he and his organisation published true exhibits, for all the people, made them accessible to many nations. This time it's not the French people, that once so hated Marie-Antoinette. But it's the same situation, only more than 200 years later. Jean-Jacques Rousseau quoted, not without self-interest, in his autobiography "The Confessions" (from the French original text): « Je me rappelai le pis d'une grande princesse-all à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain , et qui répondit: qu'il mangent de la brioche. »
Translation: "Finally I remembered the makeshift of a great princess, the people said, they have had no bread, and she answered: Let them eat cakes!"
Normally, one would be attempted to believe, that even the powerful leader of this world would have learned something of all its ineffable authority, no, it's how it was. How it used to be. Also in the Bastille in Paris they were quite happy to tortured extensively, the same in the many outposts all over France in those days. Mainly people, who opened their mouth, rebelled against the autocratic system of that time, degenerate royalist lords, the usual inhabitants of Versailles. Many people on this wide, wonderful world, even in the years of growing pluralism, are still fed instead of bread with weapons, fear and hopelessness, with death and disease. Probably this is the cake of the 21 his century.
It's never about the good-hearted people of the American, for what they gave to the world. These many nations, that have been created with sweat and blood to one. The GIs liberated Germany from the Nazis, they gave them hope by JFK, "I am a Berliner". Everyone knows. The spirit of liberty, who flew to the moon, proved pioneering spirit. America gave us so many things, not only chewing gum, large automotive dreams, Hollywood, Hamburger culture, the joy of swing, rock and roll were only a few of those. For many the new home, Ellis Island, the Empire -State Building, New York, San Francisco, cities, settlements of superlatives were created. People, great personalities were produced in America.
However, Wikileaks and their founder Julian Paul Assange, stormed as in a contemporary avatar of the modern history the new Bastille, the U.S. government, all the evil, dictatory thoughts, sometimes even ridiculous manic minutes of the oh-so-usual-eloquent diplomats.
Now, Americans should ask: Why is that? Some officials may not support everything in the own apparatus, the policy of the last decade? Maybe they can not agree with their conscience? There are obvious documents from the lion's hideaway. Why does a slightly unworldly Australian, tireless globetrotter turns out be the beginning of a new, but overwhelming revolution? He stormed the political goal and haphazard Tuileries, carried his idea, as Marie Charpointier the Tricolour. Assange overcame the enlightenment thinking and politicization. Lived the displaced, forgotten problems. Someone must do so, without doubt. Back to the people, to the genuine nations in power. It was long enough the people of this world, the incumbent, closed-class used own made policies for the financial, senseless wars, for further environmental destruction for the very personal goals of the installed disgusting satellites. Plenty of willing vassals, an inscrutable network of secret diplomacy, abductions, torture, murder, intrigue and life in apparently undemocratic manners. Everything in the disguise of higher goals that many, most people on this planet, could not understand anymore.
There occurred a certain, even some 30 years ago, unthinkable mechanism, which has now thrown the world in an undeclared cyber war by some organisation called Anonymous. They can ´t stop by militant attacks, like in cyber guerrilla warfare, the incredible criminalization of Paul Julian Assange, just show the front, allow all involved parties to proceed further. Radical U.S. politicians, or those who think they are, autocratic self actors, the mislead American dream of prosecutor, judge and executioner in one focused person. The hatred is a paralysing, serves unconditionally not to all the people of the world. It is time that America takes position, not in front of the politicians, however to the people of this earth.
For others, such as sadists, Assange already is one, who is walking the green mile, towards to the rooms of their so ugly executions. Solved by now in the closed, political world. Assange seems to be on the tube of lethal injection. The making of is just made now. Julian Paul Assange is the worldwide martyrs. Now, even that he has not earned. Not yet.
Systematically, all in years, decades exploited mature channels are used to stop the truth, which Assange published on Wikileaks. To cover up.
What shall be prevented or what should be avoided?
Does anyone in the United States fear the political meltdown? The steady moral slump of the former superpower, the former living and giving democracy in a meaningless international community which declined by some hateful operators, a system, that was installed after 9/11. A war government that sought their own questionable authority.
Has Wikileaks papers or documents that tell a different, but much more logical, credible truth about the following, to this day occurred events?
The question is: why the superpower is still at war? Why the spirit in a bottle, bin Laden, has not been presented a regular court? He may comment on the allegations. Why not? A state, that clearly has the smartest military in the world, the god-like CIA and other servants is surely enabled to find, locate an Osama- bin- Laden.
Proceed here:
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The current, daily more... more
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Especially under the current international situation, it was for us very important to add something to the killings and the general conscience of the civilized world.
This book should help to ensure, that the people who are struggling in these days to find the natural freedom are strengthened.
Human rights are like the air we breathe, like the water we drink. The bread, which we eat.
We, who live in freedom, must support the uncertain, not to leave their lives in the storm of needed revolution.
If we want to overthrow barbarians such as Gaddafi, Kim etc. , then for us all the only solution is to support the people who live in utter poverty of politics.
We got only this planet. We have to achieve freedom. Democracy is our greatest challenge for the new century. For our and the next generation.
It must be clear to the dictators, that life offers no possibility for them, except the way to live democratic principles.
For this is the beginning of the fair distribution of all our efforts on this planet. We want to create something, that will be worth living for future generations. We all bear responsibility for one another and for an ordered together.
http://www.amazon.com/hangman-Pyongyang-Weare-world-ebook/dp/B004R1Q3RC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&m=A12MGAGPLUJEQK&s=digital-text&qid=1299694696&sr=1-3Especially under the current international situation, it was for us very important to... more
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It is not just the United States that is headed for an economic collapse. The truth is that the entire world is heading for a massive economic meltdown and the people of earth need to be warned about the coming economic disaster that is going to sweep the globe. The current world financial system is based on debt, and there are alarming signs that the gigantic global debt bubble is getting ready to burst. In addition, global prices for the key resources that the major economies of the planet depend on are rising very rapidly. Despite all of our advanced technology, the truth is that human civilization simply cannot function without oil and food. But now the price of oil and the price of food are both increasing dramatically. So how is the current global economy supposed to keep functioning properly if it soon costs much more to ship products between continents? How are the billions of people that are just barely surviving today supposed to feed themselves if the price of food goes up another 30 or 40 percent? For decades, most of the major economies around the globe have been able to take for granted that massive amounts of cheap oil and massive amounts of cheap food will always be there. So what happens when that paradigm changes?
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/people-of-earth-prepare-for-economic-disasterIt is not just the United States that is headed for an economic collapse. The truth... more
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The Obama administration exercises its first U.N. Security Council veto to kill an Arab-backed resolution calling West Bank settlements 'illegal.' The vote was seen by both Israelis and Palestinians as a crucial test of U.S. loyalty.
Reporting from Jerusalem and Washington — The Obama administration, opposing 14 other United Nations Security Council members, exercised its veto power for the first time Friday to kill a resolution calling for Israeli settlements to be condemned as illegal and seeking to halt construction.
Though the resolution largely echoed long-standing criticism by the U.S. and international leaders about Israel's construction on land seized during the 1967 Middle East War, the Obama administration rejected the proposal, saying the U.N. is not the proper forum and the dispute should be handled during peace talks.
The Arab-backed resolution called Israel's settlements a major obstacle to Mideast peace talks.
GO TO STORY:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-un-israeli-settlements-20110...The Obama administration exercises its first U.N. Security Council veto to kill an... more
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It's easy to say, "Oh, poor bear," now and go about our business, but when we're all looking for a snack and there aren't any to be had, we'll remember this.It's easy to say, "Oh, poor bear," now and go about our business, but... more
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This is not something that we can continue to talk about as happening in the future as if planning for it can be put off. The world has already seen close to half a million people affected by climate change in ways that have made them have to move from their homes and homelands due to sea level rise, drought, and water scarcity which has also effected agriculture. With events becoming more severe and pronouced as the fires In Russia, the flooding in Pakistan and now Australia and severe droughts as we now see in much of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, what does happen when a land is so devastated by continuing climate change that its inhabitants can no longer live there? Where do they go?How does it effect their culture?
This particular video is from a documentary called King Tide and deals with the people of Tuvalu, a small island nation that is already seeing the effects of rising sea levels. In climate conference after climate conference however, the effects of climate change on water have been continually ignored. This even though much of these effects revolve around water and the hydrologic cycle being interfered with by the human actions of fossil fuel use, deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices (irrigation), dams, water waste, privitization and pollution resulting in sea level rise, glacier melt affecting water scarcity, floods, drought, stronger storms, erratic rainfall, etc.
I don't think it can be stressed enough based on what we are now seeing taking place globally that planning for the future regarding climate refugees is of paramount importance. We can no longer afford to act as though this is going to go away. It isn't. The socio-economic impacts alone of millions of refugees with no place to call home and no where that wants them aside from the inability to provide for them in a world where potable water and available land is shrinking are huge and cannot wait until the floods completely wash out a country or drought dries it into desert. Lives will be lost. This goes beyond politics. This truly is the moral challenge of our generation.This is not something that we can continue to talk about as happening in the future as... more
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Child scavenges for family's survival in Afghanistan
By Arwa Damon, CNN
January 4, 2011 3:09 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Marjan, 5, scavenges for trash to help keep her family warm in the winter
* Marjan's brother died from the cold and her mother worries for the other children
* UNICEF says Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be a child
* UNICEF: One in five children in Afghanistan do not live past the age of five
Kabul (CNN) -- Five-year-old Marjan sniffles from the cold as she struggles under her load. Hoisted on her back is a bag almost as big as she is.
Instead of going to school, Marjan scavenges for hours with her 10-year-old aunt collecting trash. It is a heavy burden for such a small child but a necessary one. The trash she collects is what her family uses as fuel for cooking and, more importantly, to fend off Kabul's bitter winter.
It is a matter of life and death for someone so young. Last winter, Marjan's baby brother died from the cold.
"It was dark and cold, and the baby died," she says softly, wiping her running nose. "I saw him dead and I was very sad, and I cried."
"I don't blame myself," Marjan's mother, Zarkharida, says. "We don't have firewood. I set fire to the garbage but it went out and my baby died."
Zarkharida's husband was killed in a family feud over land. She was forced to move in with relatives, already struggling to make ends meet. She built a one-room mud hut on a small piece of land.
"I wasn't able to properly cover the roof, this is why when the cold weather came my son died," she says.
Plastic tarp covers the roof, windows and doorway. She stitched a blanket from scraps of clothes given to her as charity. It is all she has to keep her family warm.
But Zarkharida fears this winter will claim another one of her children.
"Of course I am worried about my children's health," she says. "I am afraid they will get sick."
UNICEF, the UN children's agency, says that Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be a child. One in five children do not live past the age of five. Afghanistan is second only to Sierra Leone when it comes to child mortality. Most of those deaths are caused by curable childhood diseases and malnutrition, compounded by the security situation, which means that parents are unable to access proper health care.
"It is very hard to put a hard and fast figure to the number of children dying from hypothermia alone on Kabul's streets as there would undoubtedly be other reasons that would make them sick or vulnerable in the first place," UNICEF regional communications chief Sarah Crowe wrote in an e-mail. "Extreme poverty, having lost a parent, being trafficked or displaced, or many other reasons may have forced them on to the streets where they would be deprived of their most basic needs (decent food, health, immunization, protection) and exposed to the extreme cold of Afghan winters."
Marjan is constantly blowing warm air on her hands, which are grimy and cracked from the cold. She kicks off her plastic, torn shoes and tries to warm her feet on the trash fire blazing under the kettle. But it is never enough.
A meal is scraps of bread and weak tea.
Even though she has never set foot in a classroom, Marjan dreams of being a teacher. She also loves to play with dolls. But in one of the world's poorest countries, she is, instead, responsible for her family's survival.Child scavenges for family's survival in Afghanistan
By Arwa Damon, CNN... more
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